The Wrath of Time

I had a particularly stressful day, what with my pet porcupine Filster deciding to leave me and live with the next door neighbors, the Kelvash’s; and then there was the arrival of the letter I sent myself when I was five to my fifty-seven year old self through the post office’s, “Why Don’t You Write Your Future Self a Letter Campaign?,” in which I read that I hope I hadn’t gone bald.

I needed to get away for immediate peace of mind, and I got in my time travel machine and punched in the coordinates for my boyhood home, Christmas morning, 1967, Blowster, Connecticut. That was an especially good Christmas when I got the NASA approved G.I. Joe that came with an official space capsule and authentic space suit; a Queasy-Bake Cookerator (basically the Easy-Bake oven but for boys – rather than cookies, it took the same ingredients and made a turd); and a Pudding Head (this was a device that made a mold of your head, you added pudding, and when it was done, you ate your head.)

The thing is, I never made it to Christmas 1967. The time machine malfunctioned and I got stuck in-between Time. Sure, that sounds interesting, but time travel is an abomination to Time. Time doesn’t like to admit that it’s got holes. It wants us to believe it only moves forward, one moment to the next. And so Time goes berserk every time someone like me goes zipping around back and forth in it. When you get stuck in-between, Time kicks your ass by squeezing you like a candy bar in the back pocket of a sitting elephant.

There I was being squished out of existence, and in my despair, I got to thinking, “Why did I think I could avoid pain? Pain is part of life like the end pieces of bread. Trying to get out of pain actually produces more pain because pain hates to be ignored, just like me.”

Suddenly I slipped out of Time’s wrath (it turns out tears are a great Time lubricant) and ended up in 1337, Tournai, Belgium, in the midst of the Black Plague. Bodies were being piled into carts, people were coughing and wailing, the smell of death was in the air. I took a deep breath, let it out, excited to finally explore Belgium!

Lighting up!

When I was a kid I loved to play with Lite-Brite. I creatively fit small colored plastic pegs into a panel on a light box that illuminated my masterpieces. The brightness of the colors was greater than I could achieve with my crayolas. I needed the spike that came from my eyes mainlining the vital color eruptions.

When I finished one of these electric gems, my parents would photograph it with the Instamatic. But it would never capture the true glory. I’d get all depressed, lay on the floor, and say things like, “Oh, to be so misunderstood,” or, “This is what it must be like to be God.”

I realized I would never be recognized for my electric light talents unless I devoted myself to a work of such greatness that it would certainly hang in a dark room at the Blowser Community Art Museum. So I devoted myself and was 14 hours into what I was sure would be my Lite-Bright Magnum Opus when my sister surprised me with a shot from her water pistol.  The water splashed onto the Lite-Bright and I got electrocuted.

Suddenly the room disappeared and lights rapidly flashed past me. I figured I was dying, which was exciting because I thought I would certainly become famous for the creation I left behind because being dead really helps an artist’s career. But suddenly I was still alive and on the cold floor of a mildewed artist’s studio. I got excited again because I’d read the autobiography of the great sculpturer Rodin, and in it he shared how his work only really took off after he had a mystical vision.

A long haired and bearded mysticalized man was charcoal drawing an image of a woman. He looked over at me and did one of those things where one of a person’s eyebrows raises higher than you think it ever could. He began to include me in the drawing. As you might have inferred, I like attention, so I began to pose. I did the haughty look over the shoulder, followed by touching my bottom lip as I looked up and pondered, and of course, the pout.

After a few minutes, I got dizzy and things got blurry, and the room disappeared and the flashing lights returned. Suddenly I was back home, laying on the floor with an incredible headache. My Lite-Brite was smoking. The plastic pegs had melted into the panel. All the lights in the house were out.

My parents came running into the room with great worry for me. But when they saw I was okay and the state of the Lite-Brite, they blamed me for the outage, said the cost of the Lite-Brite was coming out of my allowance, and it was back to crayolas for me

As I lay in bed that night, I realized I had time traveled! I looked through my Archie Comic’s History of Art and came across a cartoon of Leonardo da Vinci and knew that’s the man I’d posed for. I got excited and woke up my sister. She panicked and covered her head because she thought I was going to clobber her for the electrocution. I said I wouldn’t and told her what had happened and that I needed her help to do it again.

We snuck downstairs and went into the living room. I turned on the TV and hugged it while my sister poured a water pitcher over me.  There was a loud crackling sound as the TV shorted out and smoke billowed. I got a slight buzz but I was still in the room. My parents ran downstairs in a panic, thinking the house was on fire. Once they figured it out, I saw this look of disappointment pass over them that sent shivers down my bones.

Sometimes I glom

I’m generally private and prefer no one else in the room but me. But there are some people I can’t help but glom on. I feel like gum on the bottom of their shoe.

That happened this morning when I time traveled to 1931, Paris, and the studio of Salvador Dalí. He was in the midst of a painting and I got down on the ground and grabbed his ankles. It wasn’t my intention. I’d only gone there to watch him paint.

Dalí didn’t mind and continued with the painting. I held on for hours. My arms didn’t get tired. I felt like someone who’d been in the desert for a while and was drinking one long sip of water through a straw.

I don’t know how much longer it was when I finally let go of Dalí’s ankles. I stood up and nodded at him. He nodded back. Painters realize how much words are a waste of time, and keep things to a few essential body movements. I’ve heard mathematicians are the same way.

I time traveled home. Fully inspired, I went out to my backyard with a shovel and began digging. I dug for hours. Eventually I reached an underground river. I held my breath and slipped into the river. I rode underwater for a distance. I can hold my breath up to a half hour. That may seem like a lot, but I’m not the world’s record holder. That’s Lloyd Gance Devinson. He’s been clocked at four hours, thirteen minutes, though that’s the moment he died.

Eventually the river let out into Lake Pasper.  I swam to the surface and lay out on the bank to dry off. I felt an itch on my right calf. I pulled up my pants leg and found a leech stuck to my skin. I peeled it off and tossed it into the water. I went back to soaking in the sun.

What it takes to finally smile

I never smiled until I was five years old. My parents tried everything to get that grin going. They tickled me, made funny faces and silly sounds, hired a clown. But I sat there stone faced.

When I was five our house caught fire. It was the middle of the night. My family and I escaped with nothing but the PJs on our bodies. We stood on the sidewalk across the street and watched the inferno engulf our home. The fire department came and did their best, but after a few hours there was nothing left.

My mom got all excited because she noticed I was smiling.

It was true. I was smiling. I felt both ends of my mouth stretched out in places they’d never been before. It felt like my tongue was cupping a glob of sugar.

I joined hands with my sister, mom, and dad, as we giddily danced in a circle around our dog Pesky, who was leaping high in the air. We spontaneously sang, “Woo-di-doh-doh-doh-do!”

I noticed stares from the fire department members, and a few of our neighbors. But it didn’t stop our spectacular response, or my smile.

That night we slept in a Howard Johnson motel. Actually everyone was asleep but me. I was looking up at the curious dark shapes on the ceiling that were moving ever so slowly. They emanated a slight jingling. I imagined they were trying to tell me something, but of course I didn’t know what.

Pesky woke to their sounds. He looked up and watched their movements too. He jumped onto the bed and barked at the shapes. That’s when they stopped and my family woke up. I kept what I experienced a secret. These kind of things gain in personal value when you don’t share them.

A general example of my day

I don’t have a schedule. I wake up in the morning. I lay there for a while. I don’t have a job, so there’s no getting up and going to work so I can make a meeting. I don’t have close friends, so there’s no venturing out to make a breakfast or lunch appointment so I can talk about what’s going on in my life.

Eventually I’ll get up out of bed to use the bathroom. After that I find myself cascading to the kitchen for food since hunger is surfacing in me. I’ll chew the food and swallow. Things feel better. Then I sometimes go back to lay in bed. Or I might go outside and stand in my backyard. Laying down and standing are similar experiences for me. There’s not much movement. It’s not tiring. And I don’t have to make decisions or think if I’m doing it right.

Sometimes I’ll walk around the block. This makes me feel I accomplished something. Later on if I happen to find myself in a situation where I’m with someone else, which I never do, I can tell them what I did and they could respond by saying, “Really?” Or, “I should get out and walk more.”

At some point during the day I take a time travel trip. It’s never planned. Suddenly I get a feeling to go somewhere in time, I step into the time machine, I punch in the coordinates, and then press the Go button. And then there I am. I did this today when I went to April 4th, 1841 and the White House in Washington, D.C. The President, William Henry Harrison was on his deathbed. He’d only been President for a month. His doctors were applying leeches to his chest in a final attempt to keep him alive. Harrison had enough, pulled off the leeches, sat up and said, “Life is a struggle to stave off death, but death waits peacefully, mouth open for its inescapable meal.” President Harrison fell back into the bed and died.

I returned to my time machine and came home. I sat down on my living room floor. I have a sofa, but I always sit on the floor. The sofa makes me sleepy. The floor is firmer and makes me feel alert.